Dear John
by Ink On Paper
Summary: She wrote him two letters because she was leaving.


**A/N: I hope that this is in character enough. . . . I'm still not great at writing Jibbs, but here we go. I suppose this could go in hand with There Is Not Enough Time as they are both Judgement Day fics, but they definitely stand alone. Let me know if you like it, if you want. Kit.**

**P.S.: All We Are Chapter III should be up midweek at the lastest -I've got two AP exams two weeks from Tuesday and Thursday and it's crunch time, so. . . . yeah.**

**DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. Sadly.**

Dear John

If he went home, he knew he would he would do something stupid. And there will never be enough bourbon in the world anyway to drown today's memory away. Jenny's memory.

A lifetime, it seems, of memories.

Because Jennifer Sheppard is dead.

And the image of her bullet torn flesh and shattered porcelain face will forever be seared in the back of his mind. Every time he blinks he is forced to see familiar red hair stained crimson. And a pool of blood reflecting a delicate countenance. A still countenance. Forever impressed in his memory, forever etched into photographs.

The smell of burning wood has never been pleasant.

And the smell of arson will never be.

Six hours later and he continues to inhale smoke as acrid ash haunts his nose and the sight of leaping flames char his eyes. Shattering glass of gilded windows and golden heat licking the walls of her room. Her apartment. Him.

The pavement of the Georgetown street.

He unfolds the worn paper under his palms, drinks in the sight of her neat, looping cursive, flowing rivers of black ink across a white canvas. It's like she's talking to him beyond the grave.

So he reads slowly, cherishing her last words to him, hearing her voice faintly in his mind's ear, clinging to what is left of nothing.

_Dear John,_

_You know I hate stuff like this. Words never sound right and it always comes out so clichéd . . . . . Besides you've always been a man of few words anyway._

_I swore that if I ever crossed paths with you again, I would rectify the wrongs I dealt both of us. I swore to myself that if I was ever given a chance to say anything to you again, it would never be like this._

_I'm a coward. So much so, in fact, that I cannot even bear to address this letter to you because I cannot stand to read your name every time my eyes reread what I've written. I'm such a coward that I can't even tell you this in person, that I couldn't even permit you to share in my pain and last months of life . . . ._

_I'm dying, Jethro. It's cancer, which is irony, I suppose. The one thing that can kill me and I can never confront. After all those years of undercover ops and bombs and recons, after Cairo and Marseilles and Paris, I meet my demise by some damn cells._

_Damn it._

_It hurts and I shake sometimes, my motor skills apparently are one of the first things to go. But I'm so damn stubborn and so damn determined to write this to you tonight, right now, now that I've finally found the balls to say what I need to say, what you need to hear. Forget the migraines, forget the cliché. Forget the fact that I messed up._

_Now is what matters._

_I love you._

_There. Once again, I'm too ashamed to say it, too cowardly, too weak. So I'll just write it down and maybe you'll get this eventually. Or never, which again would be fitting because there was so much never said, why the hell start now?_

_I need you to do me a favor because I've never asked too much of you. I need you to return to Paris, someday. I need you to go back one day, alone or with someone else, and I need you to just remember. Remember me and remember us and remember everything that never was. I'm only asking for a minute, Jethro. Just a minute. And then if you've given that then you can forget me because you are good at that._

_I like to think that you loved me like you loved Shannon. Maybe not the same, but similar. I like to think that you loved me more than you loved Diane and Stephanie and the one with that ratty little terrier thing. I like to think I made you happy. I like to think you won't forget me because you never forgot Shannon._

_Do you remember that case, back in '06, when some marine's wife clubbed him to death with a nine-iron? God, we stayed up all night after that interrogation laughing our asses off and eating takeout. I was never able to decide if we found it so funny because she confessed he was a 'bastard' or because we drank so much bourbon. You always knew when I needed that, bourbon or a shoulder. I could never figure out why._

_I loved your basement. I loved the smell of sawdust and you and sawdust on you. And I loved those damn boats. But I swear if you even think about naming one 'Jenny,' so help me . . . ._

_You were the man that taught me how to be the investigator I was and I don't mean that as an insult. Everything I did, every stupid little thing I did as a Probie, the things that would piss you off the most? You would ask me what the hell I was thinking and usually I just took the head slap and pleaded the fifth. I never told you that I was trying to make you proud. Were you proud of me, Jethro? I never asked. I never will._

_I never should have left you like a did. I should have explained, should have told you instead of writing that awful letter. Instead of writing this awful letter. I wish I wasn't so afraid to have told you I loved you and risked everything that really, in the end, I suppose, meant nothing. I won't be remembered for my political expertise, at least not in your eyes. I'll be remembered in two letters, two pathetic letters, ramblings of a dying woman._

_I love you._

_I love you. I love you. I love you. And I will never get the chance to say that._

_Please don't think of every dumb thing I ever said, every stupid thing I never did say. Instead think of Paris and Marseilles, think of Serbia. I'll never forget Serbia. That little cottage. Two weeks of bliss._

_Think of all the love we made._

_Me_

He set the paper down, reverently laying it out on his desk with steady hands.

The true irony was that for a woman so good at goodbyes, she had not said it once within her letter. Nor did she tell him to be safe, to obey the rules, to do all the things she knew he'd never ever do.

She never apologized and for that he was grateful.

So he reached over and flicked off the lamp perched on his desk, plunging himself and the long empty bullpen into darkness. And he reached under his calendar and procured a little key. And once the bottom desk drawer was yawning open, he slipped the letter into it wide maw and felt around for the small metal flask that he found under several obscure documents.

With the drawer closed and the key returned to its safe keep, he raised the flask to his lips.

And before he allowed the amber liquid to char his throat he whispered into the silence, a prayer, a plea, a toast. And the bourbon went down burning as hot tears cut his face.

"Semper Fi, Jen."


End file.
